A study of thoracic injury criteria for elderly Korean occupant

Youn, Younghan; Han, W. H.; Hong, S. J.; Hong, C. H.; Yoon, K. H.

Affiliations

¹Korea University of Technology and Education, Cheonan, Korea

²Samsung Traffic Safety Research Institute, Seoul, Korea

³Hyundai Motor, Hwaseong, Korea

⁴Korea Automobile Test and Research Institute, Hwaseong, Korea

Abstract

According to 2005 national census, more than 65 year older population is about 10% of total 48millions population. In 2030, the elderly rate will be reached up to 23%. The statistical analysis of elderly traffic accident from the national policy report, the elderly fatalities was 2,183 (33.3% of 6,563) in 2004. This was the double increase compared with 14 year years ago. In 1994, elderly fatality was 1,748 (17.3%). Elderly driver and passengers have a disproportionately higher crash involvement rate and commonly sustain more severe injuries than the other generation.

The current frontal impact regulation of Korean safety standard (KMVSS 102) is based on the FMVSS 208 to protect the motor vehicle occupant in the event of frontal crash type accidents. The injury criteria utilized in the regulation is based on 50%tile Hybrid III dummies in both driver and passenger sides. Therefore, no motor vehicle standards in Korean are designed to specially address the needs of elderly persons. Since the elderly population is rapidly increasing, it is more important to improve the safety standard to mitigate elderly casualties.

A primary objective of the study is to develop a guideline or standard for elderly occupants protection with new injury criteria on the frontal impact regulation and to promote design of restraint system or so call silver vehicle for elderly in the domestic market. The physical characteristics of elderly Korean occupant are relatively small and lighter than that of western elderly. Data from the SizeKorea database (total surveyed number of subjects in SizeKorea database was 14,200 between 0 to 90 years old), the 50th %tile height and weight of the subjects in target group (527 male samples) were 162.8cm and 62kg, respectively.

From the in-depth study of recent years vehicle-tovehicle frontal crash accidents, the elderly occupant sustain more thorax rib fracture injury within MAIS <2. More than MAIS & gt;3 case, elderly suffers more hemo/pneumo thorax injury than younger occupant.

In this study, as an assessment tool with scaling methods 50%tile Korean elderly Hybrid III type simulation model was developed to mitigate elderly thorax injury.

Links

URL: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/esv/esv21/09-0367.pdf

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Cited By (2)

Year	Entry
2013	Hong SW, Park W, Hong S. Thoracic injury characteristics of elderly drivers in real world car accidents. In: Proceedings of the 23rd International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). May 27-30, 2013; Seoul, South Korea.
2012	Beck B. Optimising Protection for Motor Vehicle Rear Seat Occupants [PhD thesis]. University of New South Wales; 2012.